Letters

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, The Argonaut incorrectly identified the late Marina del Rey photographer and community leader Greg Wenger by his son’s name in a Sept. 7 event listing for the Marina del Rey Historical Society’s 10th Anniversary Celebration and Sale. We apologize for the error.

Risk Without Reward

Re: “Playa isn’t Porter Ranch,” News, Aug. 10

The Neighborhood Council of Westchester-Playa believes everything SoCal Gas tells them as gospel and assumes anyone with a counter opinion is a symptom of misinformation. SoCal Gas has an economic interest in keeping the Playa del Rey facility open, so obviously they will tell everyone we need this facility. However, their profit margins should not outweigh the economic, health and social interests of the millions of us living in Greater Los Angeles.

After the events in Aliso Canyon, the safety record of SoCal Gas could be seen as questionable. But as a resident of Playa del Rey in the immediate vicinity of the gas storage facility, from my perspective this is simply a question of whether we actually need the facility to meet the energy needs of Greater Los Angeles.

It is the responsibility of SoCal Gas not just to ensure the safety of the facility, but to prove the local demand for this facility.
If they cannot justify the need for this gas locally, it should be shut down immediately because no safety measure can guarantee a major leak or blow out
won’t occur.

Aliso Canyon has over 12 times the storage capacity of the Playa del Rey facility and has been off-line for almost two years with no consequences to our energy supply or natural gas supply. Surely, if SoCal Gas and Greater Los Angeles was able to survive without its largest gas facility, it raises a number of questions about how much we need the oldest and smallest.

Aliso Canyon devastated the lives of tens of thousands of residents, but it could have been so much worse had it not been located in a relatively remote area. SoCal Gas had to provide relocation assistance for anyone who lived within in a three-mile radius of leak. If that same three-mile radius were to occur around one of the wells at the Playa del Rey facility, that would require the relocation of hundreds of thousands of residents, disrupting the regional or corporate headquarters of many major employers and shutting down LAX, the fourth-busiest airport in the world.

The health and economic threat this facility poses, in the wake of the Aliso Canyon event, are monumental. If we don’t need the gas it produces in our local community, then this facility should be abandoned.

Robert Vaghini

Playa del Rey

She Smells Trouble

Re: “Playa isn’t Porter Ranch,” News, Aug. 10

As a resident of Playa del Rey, I’m very concerned about the SoCal Gas storage facility. Residents can smell the gas, and I saw the 2013 incident in which flames shot up from the wetlands.

It doesn’t seem that our neighborhood council is protecting our safety interests as residents near the facility. Clearly, more residents need to get educated about the SoCal Gas facility in an unbiased manner.

I personally feel like we are gambling with the risk of experiencing a disaster similar to Aliso Canyon and that we should move towards becoming a neighborhood operating on 100% renewable energy instead.

Nicole Lackowski

Playa del Rey

FROM THE WEB

Re: “Keep Motors off the Bike Path,” Letters, Sept. 7

Electric bikes are legal on bike paths: 99% of those sold have a top speed of 20 miles per hour, which is under the threshold for street or off-road use only. Most of the athletic bike riders that ride in groups ride at 25 or more miles per hour. Gov. Jerry Brown and the rest of the U.S.A. and Europe already regulated e-bikes a few years ago – you can Google it. Share the bike path unless you want a lane diet for e-bikes, pedestrians and normal bikes.

Greg Voevodsky

Re: Hate Comes Home, Aug. 17

I find this article to be grossly disingenuous. I could provide you example after example of the exact same conduct by leftwing students who disrupt conservative meetings throughout California. What exactly was
that “love” up in Berkeley all about otherwise?

Trump gave a moronic speech post Charlottesville, but he has never endorsed or praised neo-Nazis. His son in law and daughter are Jewish. The neo-Nazis have specifically called Trump out because of his daughter.

What is happening now is the result of allowing the crazy left that free pass for doing the precise same thing the crazy right is doing now, only they don’t have the numbers.

David Mamann

Give it a rest. Stupid false equivalences like these are ruining discourse in America. Being against hate groups is not remotely the same as being for them. If you think Donny’s “both sides” rhetoric is moronic, it’s because he’s actually a moron — a sheltered rich kid with no brains, no humility and no empathy. Your ‘both sides’ rhetoric is equally moronic. One need not explicitly ‘endorse’ hate groups in order to court their support and enable them.